


and this is how it starts

by mariathepenguin



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-07 20:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4276779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariathepenguin/pseuds/mariathepenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“One quiet month,” Emma breathes, eyes fluttering. “ That’s all I want from you people. One month...” she coughs, and her eyes close. Regina presses her hands harder against Emma, and she jerks awake.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>“One month of bear claws and gossiping with your mother’s diminutive minions on our citizens’ dime, you mean,” Regina replies, and Emma smiles, but Regina can see, feel her life leaking out between her fingers. Her heart speeds up and her breath catches in her throat at the thought of Emma dying here, alone with Regina in a mouldy cave.</i></p><p>Or</p><p>Emma loves Regina. Regina isn't so sure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an AUish piece where they came back from Neverland and pretty much settled into Storybrooke, mainly because I haven't watched season 3 and I'm not 100% sure what actually happens. This is based on an imagine your OTP tumblr prompt that I'll link to in the end of the last chapter.

“Regina,” Emma croaks.

Regina watches as Storybrooke’s Saviour bleeds all over the dirt of one of their more unsavoury caves.

“Did you kill it?” Emma looks terrible. Her skin is drained of colour, and her breath comes out out in long, drawn wheezes, like every inhale is a fight. Her wound in her side is still bleeding, bright red blood that Regina dimly remembers means an artery has probably been nicked.

“No,” she admits, and she folds her hands harder over the ugly wound on Emma’s side, feeling her gloves grow heavy with blood. Emma groans in pain and the reverberations travel up her arms. She swallows hard to keep the nausea away. “I got distracted after it hurt you. I don’t think it’s gone far.”

“One quiet month,” Emma breathes, eyes fluttering. “ That’s all I want from you people. One month...” she coughs, and her eyes close. Regina presses her hands harder against Emma, and she jerks awake.

“One month of bear claws and gossiping with your mother’s diminutive minions on our citizens’ dime, you mean,” Regina replies, and Emma smiles, but Regina can see, feel her life leaking out between her fingers. Her heart speeds up and her breath catches in her throat at the thought of Emma dying here, alone with Regina in a mouldy cave.

“Emma,” she says softly, and Emma’s eyes flicker from where they had been fixed sightlessly at the ceiling. She looks like Henry, Regina realises, her soul sinking, Henry with a fever or earache, Henry hurting and reaching for her for comfort. “Help is coming. I called your parents, and they are coming.” Her magic is depleted, her vision greying at the edges from spell exhaustion, and she wants to scream with frustration.

“I don’t think they’re gonna make it in time,” Emma says. Her voice is flat, weak, and Regina resists the urge to dig her fingers into her wound to keep her awake.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. “ Stay awake, and you’ll be fine.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Emma says. “I was gonna bring you something pretty, and you were gonna invite me in, and… did I ever tell you I like your garden?”

“Stop talking,” Regina says. “ You’re wasting your energy.”

“I had it all planned out,” Emma says, and Regina is utterly confused. Emma sees it, and laughs, a weak sound that rattles in her chest.

“I love you, Regina,” Emma breathes. “Didn’t you know?”

Shock keeps her rooted in place, her hands maintaining steady pressure as Emma’s eyes dim. She really is dying, Regina realises, with a cold certainty that seems to freeze her bones.

“No,” she says, staring down into Emma’s eyes. “No,” she says, quieter.

“It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” Emma says, voice at a whisper.

“Emma…” Regina has no idea what to say. Emma hasn’t thrown her off her guard this badly since she first showed up in town.

“Just tell me,” Emma says. “Please. Did you. Could you… was I completely off track?” Her eyes are wet, and more intense than Regina has ever seen them.

She could tell her the truth, and say yes. She could be truthful, like Henry wants her to be. Or she could be kind. She takes a breath, and lifts a hand from Emma’s stomach and presses it gently to the crown of her head, smearing blood in her hair.

“No,” she says. “ You weren’t completely off-track.” Emma’s eyes lock on hers and Regina braces herself for Emma to declare her a liar, but she only relaxes into the touch.

“Okay,” she breathes. Then: “don’t leave.”

“I won’t,” Regina promises. She watches Emma’s eyes close, and she stays in the same uncomfortable crouch over Emma as the Charmings rush in and and Blue places a stasis spell on Emma. She watches Charming cradle Emma’s body in his arms as they hurry out of the cave.

She follows Snow and Charming and their gaggle of dwarves out of the cave and onto the sand, feet stumbling as she tries to figure out what she’s going to tell Henry. She’s so wrapped up that she almost misses Snow’s muted gasp and she hurries ahead just in time to watch the blue sparks sweep out from under Emma’s skin and hover over the gaping wound, pulling the torn skin back together.

Emma’s spine bows, then overextends so sharply that Charming almost drops her and he carefully lowers her to the sand.

They all watch, mesmerised, as Emma’s magic pulls her back together, fading her bruises and causing several uncomfortable clicks as her broken bones realign themselves. Emma takes a shuddering breath, eyes popping open and surveying the group. She spares a small smile for Regina before her eyes roll back in her head and her body goes limp.

Snow sobs again, but they can all see that Emma is still breathing and the sound is more relief than anything else.

“How…” a dwarf, probably Grumpy, says quietly.

“Magic,” The Blue Fairy says, her face unreadable.

“Saviour magic,” Charming adds, face so proud Regina thinks it may crack under the strain.

Emma Swan. That idiotic, stubborn woman. She can’t even die right, Regina thinks viciously, and she digs her fingernails into her palms, hard enough to stop their shaking.

****  
  


*

They take her to the hospital anyway, because she is barely breathing and her eyes haven’t opened since the beach. Regina walks behind the group, her heavy gloves bumping against her thighs as she walks.

Emma loved - loves her. Not in the way Regina is slowly beginning to love Snow, slowly and acridly. She will never be tender with Snow. But Emma’s eyes had been open and scared and wet, and Regina had felt her sincerity as clearly as if she was feeling it herself.

How could she have been so stupid? How could she have missed so much?

“Henry,” she says, stopping in her tracks. “I have to go and get him. He needs to know.”

The group doesn’t stop, all focused on the awkward bundle David is balancing in his arms, and Snow is the only person to acknowledge her, throwing a distracted wave over her shoulder before hurrying on.

She is a liar, again, and her son’s mother almost died. She stops to cry for a single, breathless minute before continuing on.

****  
  


*

****  
  


“Really, kid, I’m fine.” Henry glares and crosses his arms.

“Mom said you were hurt really bad.” His eyes narrow.

“Yeah, I was. But… magic. A magic thing happened and now I’m fine, see?” Emma sits up from her hospital bed and wiggles her arms. She looks ridiculous, and Regina looks away to try to dull the pulling in her chest. Henry looks at her hard, before taking a tentative step forward. Emma pulls him into a hug and he holds on like he is afraid she’ll disappear right here and then.

Regina stands at the doorway and watches them both, feels affection and jealousy tugging at her with equal strength. Emma gives her one of those looks, one of those look what we have glances that she had started to welcome. Now it feels weighted with something she never wanted and she turns away and busies herself looking for Dr. Whale.

****  
  


*

She takes Henry home and throws her bloody gloves into the washing machine. She knows she should probably just throw them away, but instead she sits on the floor and watches them swirl around in the soapy water.

*

That thing they had encountered by the beach. It wasn't like anything she’s seen before. Monsters in the Enchanted Forest tended to be hair and muscle, but this one was sleek and fast, so thin it almost disappeared when it turned sideways. It had cold blue eyes, a worrying resistance to magic and razor-sharp claws that had ripped through Emma like she was made of paper. None of that sounds even vaguely familiar. And that thing is still roaming Storybrooke, probably. Wounded, but even more dangerous, prowling the streets. Maybe still hunting. And now it has Emma’s scent, her blood under its claws. Can it scent? She doesn’t know.

The paper in her hands gives way as she twists it, and she drops it like it’s on fire. That woman, she thinks, and she closes her eyes and wishes, hard, the way Rumpelstiltskin had taught her before she had enough knowledge and control fine-tune her magic use. Protect her. Not ideal, but her magic has been wavering since the caves and doubts she can do anything more precise. Protect her, Regina thinks harder, and maybe it is her guilt or her worry or her frustration but the magic tears out of her in a way that it rarely has before, layering under her skin and rushing away all at once.

****  
  
  


*

“Mom!”

Her bed dips under the weight of an overexcited almost-teenager and she pulls she covers over her head. The bed shakes as Henry scrambles up and shakes her shoulders.

“I know you’re awake.”  
  


“Henry, please,” she says into her pillow.

“Mom, come on,” he says,and she finally cracks her eyes open to his face a few inches from hers.

“Emma’s been alone in the hospital all night. Grandma and Gramps went home, remember? We should go and see her.”

“She’s probably very tired, sweetheart. She might not appreciate visitors.”

“Nah, I already texted her and said we were coming for breakfast. She said it’s cool. But I’m hungry, so can we go now?” He stares expectantly and waits until she nods before bouncing off the bed. “ Awesome. I’m gonna make her a get well soon basket.” He runs out of the room and she spends a quiet few seconds staring at her utterly remarkable ceiling before getting out of bed.

****  
  


*

Emma is sitting up in bed and pretending not to watch the door when they arrive and Regina hangs back to watch Henry shyly hand her the get well soon basket he made her. It startles her sometimes, the way he can shift from bold and brash to shy and unsure in a second. He was like that as a baby too, holding his arms out to be held by Ruby and Granny and Archie before changing his mind and retreating back to her. He’s much too old for that now, but she can see flashes of that old instinct as Emma pulls out comic books and socks and the expensive chocolate she keeps hidden behind the coffee beans.

“Oh, kid. Thanks,” Emma says, and she looks so pleased, cheeks tinged pink and smile pulling at her mouth.

“Mom helped,” Henry says, glancing her way. Emma looks up at her, and God, Regina is an idiot because Emma is about as subtle as a firetruck, how had she missed this?

“Come in,” Emma says, and blushes. And Regina has done so many things to this woman, hurt her in so many different and horrible ways but this seems like the worst, somehow. She walks across the room like the floor liable to turn into quicksand at any moment and stops by Henry. He beams at her.

“Told you she would like it,” he says.

“You were right,” she agrees, and stifles the impulse to throw the windows open. “How are you feeling?” Emma shrugs, a lopsided action that makes her look even more dishevelled.

“Alive. That’s enough for now, I guess,” and Regina sees the exhaustion in her eyes, bottled up and put away for the duration of their visit. “Hey, kid. Can you do me a favour? I am really, really thirsty and these ice chips aren’t cutting it anymore. Could you get me a Coke from the vending machine?’

“But that’s all the way on the second floor,” Henry half whines as she shuffles towards the door.

“Stretch those young legs of yours,” Emma says and suddenly they are alone and Emma’s gaze is on her. She twitches irritably and runs a hand through her hair.

“So,” Emma says.

“Emma,” Regina says.

“I’ve always liked how you said my name,” Emma says. “You always make it sound so fancy.” Her eyes are honest to goodness twinkling, and Regina straightens her spine and smooths her hand across the front of her skirt.

“I care for you very deeply,” she starts. “More importantly, Henry cares for you.” She is settling into this, the words sliding out almost before she has a chance to catch them. “But not in the way you want me to. Not in the way I said I did.” She is expecting surprise, but Emma only looks resigned, like maybe she was half expecting this.

“So what you said in the cave…”

“You were dying, Emma. You were bleeding all over my hands. I would have said anything.” Half a second after she says the words  she realises how cruel they must sound and  wants to snatch them back.

“Well.” Emma’s voice is rusty. “I mean. It worked. I’m here.”

“And. Emma.” She reaches out to touch her for maybe only the second time in their lives, and places a hand on her arm. “I shouldn’t have lied, I know, and I am sorry, but you’re here.”.

“Yeah,” Emma says.

****  
  


*

Henry takes an age bringing the drink back and Emma keeps her eyes firmly on the doorway.

“Maybe you could wait outside,” Emma says.

“If that’s what you want,” she replies.

“Please,” Emma says.

****  
  


*

They release Emma the next day and Henry says she’s doing well. He doesn’t say much else and Regina contents herself with that. It’s better for everyone if they have some space from each other, and besides, she has more pressing matters to attend to.

“C’mon, Regina,” Ruby slurs from her couch.

“I wish you would leave,” she says, but Ruby ignores her as always, and hugs one of her couch pillows to her chest.

“Be a friend.”

“We’re not friends,” she reminds her, but she nudges the water glass toward her all the same.

“I was gonna go home. I was. But you’re so much closer.”

“I live ten minutes away from the town centre, and the diner’s right on main street,” she points out, and Ruby groans.

“Jesus, Regina.”

Regina gives up on any chance of getting to bed any time soon and sits on the far end of the couch, next to Ruby’s boot-clad feet.

“We are kind of friends though right?” Ruby’s voice is hoarse  and muffled into the pillow that’s now clutched to her face, but Regina can hear the loneliness creeping underneath. She sighs.

“Yes, we are.”

*

Ruby stumbles down the next morning in a vest and tiny shorts that barely cover her ass, and Regina almost spits her coffee back into her cup.

“Morning. Coffee?” Ruby has always had an almost supernatural ability to drink without suffering hangovers, but today she looks a little ragged. Regina pours another cup and passes it over.

“Is there a reason you are prancing around half naked in a house my son lives in?

“Heard him leave when I was still upstairs. And I don’t prance. I sway.”

“Semantics,” she sniffs.

Ruby’s ability to be quiet at the right time one of Regina’s favourite things about her, and they sip their coffee in silence. That, and her overtures of friendship missing that edge of condescension that comes so naturally to Snow White makes it easy to sit in her kitchen and have breakfast with her, just like it was easy to have lunch and go out for drinks that one time

(and to be clear, they may be friends now, but Regina is never, ever drinking with Ruby again)

and it is so easy, even when Regina can sense the gloom starting to settle back on Ruby.

“You know, you were always the most interesting person in this town, after Henry. You were the only one who still did anything surprising.”

“I liked you too, even then,” Ruby says absently. She is glancing at the plate of waffles on the table and Regina pushes it closer.

“It’s for you,” she tells her. “I ate already.”

Ruby may be easy to spend time with, but she is very difficult to know, and that’s what friends do, isn’t it? They get to know each other. Regina has only had practice with one other person and Kathryn still won’t speak to her, so she’s not sure how much she should follow her instincts but she wants to try. And that’s what her life is these days, trying and-

“Do I have something on my face?”  
  


-and this only comes naturally with Henry, but-

“You’ve been spending more time in my guest room than the diner lately,” she says, and Ruby’s face shutters closed.

“Look, I know I’ve kind of been in your space, but-”

“No,” she interrupts. “That’s not what I meant. Is there something going on?” Ruby shrugs.

“Everything’s the same. Exactly the same,” she says, a bitter twist to her mouth and Regina waits, and sips her coffee, and waits.

“Mary Margaret didn’t like me much,” Ruby says eventually. “I guess… I guess we’re all more like our alter egos than we like to think about.”  She shrugs again carelessly. “And, she’s busy. Love of her life, and all.” She takes another sip out of what is definitely an empty cup by now.

“You’re her best friend,” Regina says tactlessly.

“Yeah. I guess. Things change, you know, people grow up and move on and your slutty wolf friend isn’t as much of a priority.”

“Snow White is an idiot,” she says. “With tragic fashion sense. I always thought you were too good for her. Anyone who can hold any kind of conversation with a woodland animal isn’t worth being friends with.”

Maybe Regina isn’t the nurturing, hand holding type of friend, but Ruby does smile, and the gloom in the kitchen lifts a little and that feels like enough for now.

Ruby leaves after breakfast and presses a kiss to Regina’s cheek as she leaves. It’s warm and comforting,  and she starts in surprise.

“You’re a good person, Regina,” Ruby says, her eyes serious. “You deserve good things.” And she turns around and walks down the drive, loose limbed and graceful even now.

*

The diner is full for mid afternoon, and Regina steers Henry toward one of the quieter booths in the back. If he notices her manoeuvring he doesn’t say anything about it, and soon he is slurping at a double chocolate milkshake while she picks at her coffee cake.

The routine and familiarity of a trip to Granny’s with Henry, who still thinks it’s funny to smear whipped cream over his top lip, calms her and she reaches over and pulls at a lock of his hair.

“It’s nice to see you so happy,” she says, smiling.

“You too,” he says. “You’ve been kinda… I don’t know. But this is good, right?”

“Kind of what?”

“I don’t know.” He swirls his straw around the shake. “Things were so weird. With… your mom, and Pan. It was cool but so weird. And I missed home.” She ignores that twinge she gets in the palms of her hands every time someone mentions Cora, and reaches over to take his hand. It’s rougher than she remembers, and bigger too, and she squeezes once before letting go.

“You’re right, it is very weird. Nothing went the way I ever thought it would, not even in my wildest dreams.” Of course, all her Storybrooke dreams had been purposely vague, with only a happy Henry and a miserable Snow White the only clear parts. “I don’t really know what to do next. I think that’s part of the problem.” She hasn’t spoken candidly to Henry in so long, and it gives her a fierce ache of remembering, of whispering her secrets into a tiny, perfect ear, his baby self tucked small enough to fit into the crook of her arm.

“I think you’re doing okay,” he says. “No, really great. Grandma couldn’t run the council without you.”

Which is certainly true. Whatever supposed right to rule Snow inherited from her family doesn’t extend to the practical details and decision making of keeping a medium size town running more or less smoothly.

“I think I’m doing okay,” she agrees.

“We are,” he says. “We totally are.” He grins at her, then stares mournfully into his empty milkshake glass. She raises her hand to signal for another. She can worry about future dental bills another day.

*

She can see Emma out of the corner of her eye, fiddling with the napkin dispenser and talking to Michael Tillman with unnecessarily large gestures. She fixes her eyes outside the window and hopes they will continue to ignore each other’s existence. Henry hoovers up the last of his second milkshake and catches sight of Emma just as she reaches the door.

“Emma!” He calls. He waves, and Emma has no choice but to walk over to them.

“Hi!” He says. “Where were you going? Didn’t you see us? Sit down!” He moves over to the wall to Emma can sit beside him, and she does, slowly.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were working a shift at the station.” The question comes out a little more hostile than Regina intended, but Emma only raises an eyebrow.

“I am. I was trying to catch up with Whale. He’s promised to head a booth at the Fall Fair. Something to do with body snatching through the ages. Don’t know, don’t really want to.” Emma is still facing her, but her body is angled toward Henry, and for a moment it is two years ago and Regina is on the outside of their little bubble.

“Mom let me held her set that up,” Henry says. “But the stalls this year are really weird.”

“Weird? In this town? Doesn’t seem likely,” Emma says, and Henry wrinkles his nose.

“Emma, this is serious. It’s tradition. And I’m on the committee this year,” he reminds her. “It would look terrible if the first ever Storybrooke Fall Fair didn’t go well.” He looks so incredibly serious, and familiar in a way that she doesn’t recognise until she catches Emma sneaking a glance at her, and Henry is raising his chin the way she does, and the bubble is gone.

(He’s so much like you, Emma had told her on the way back from Neverland. You couldn’t let go if your lives depended on it.)

“Gotcha, kid,” Emma says. “Serious business. Speaking of serious business,” she turns to Regina. “We need to figure out what we’re gonna do about that thing.”

“We’ll talk about it later,” she says, as Henry stares at them with undisguised interest.

“Later, when,” Emma asks, and just like that the atmosphere in their booth goes from pleasant, if fragile to just fragile. Henry wraps his hands around the stem of his milkshake glass and watches them carefully. Emma backpedals quickly, takes a breath, and runs a hand through her hair. As she does Regina’s magic, usually humming and docile with Emma near, rears away from her and sends shocks of power down her arm. She locks eyes with Emma, who is clearly aware of what just happened.

“What the hell was that?” She snarls, forgetting Henry for a moment, and Emma looks away.

Her own magic is settled and too tightly controlled to escape her control unless something is very wrong, and Emma’s shifty behaviour only makes her more suspicious.

“You’re right. Later is probably a better idea. See ya, kid.” She is out of the booth before Regina can take a breath, and out of the door before she can march forward and pull her sleeve back and demand answers.

“Why are you guys fighting again?” Henry demands.

“Just a disagreement,” she says, and her smile stretches plastic across her face. “We’ll talk later, and I’m sure everything will be fine.” He gives her a disbelieving look, but leaves it be, for once in his life. She flexes her now-sore hands and looks across to the street to where Emma is walking into town hall, shoulders hunched and hands tucked in her pockets like the weight of the world is on her shoulders.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Later is four days after the diner. Four days that Emma has spent avoiding and slipping away and Regina knows this is an awkward situation, but Emma is a thirty year old woman. Her research has led nowhere and she is having increasingly frequent nightmares of that thing smashing through her town, shredding through the people she loves. Emma’s frankly childish behaviour is grating on her already tired nerves.

Which means that finding Emma slumped in the alley behind the Rabbit Hole four days after chasing the damnable woman through town is the absolute fucking last straw and Regina doesn’t even bother to be gentle when she reaches down and pulls Emma to her feet.

“What is wrong with you? You are an elected official, you idiot.” The arm that Regina has in her grip stiffens and pulls away, and Emma glares at her with bleary, whiskey-clouded eyes.

“I didn’t fucking call you,” she says. “ Where’s Snow?”

“Sick,” she says. “ She asked me to come and get you.” Regina had refused, but Snow had cried and then thrown up over the phone and Regina had been too disgusted to argue.

“I don’t want you here,” Emma says. She sounds like a petulant child, and only reinforces that impression by nearly tripping over her own feet.

“Don’t be an idiot,” she says reaching for Emma’s arm again. Emma wrenches away.

“Don’t touch me,” she spits. Regina takes a step back.

“Fine,” she says. “Will you get in the car with me?” Emma gives her a long, searching look.

“You are so fucking horrible sometimes,” Emma says. “I feel… I am so stupid. I can’t believe I… and you… You lied to me, and I believed you. I really am an idiot.” She leans against the filthy wall and rubs at her eyes. Regina sighs and steps closer.

“Emma. You are not an idiot. I know I hurt you.” She is sorry, she finds. Sorry that she is the reason that Emma is miserable and blinking up at her like Regina broke her heart. She reaches out and touches a hand to Emma’s wrist. “Please let me take you home.”

Emma lets her reach out and touch her wrist. Just as she starts to pull her forward, a soft sigh, so quiet that she can barely hear it, carries forward on the wind. She whips around to see a long, thin shadow stretching across the entrance to the alley. Emma freezes and stiffens against her, and she steps closer to keep her still. Her heart is beating so hard she can feel it in her eyeballs, and she tries desperately to get control of her breathing as the shadow stops outside the alley.

The creature steps into view and swings its head from side to side, like a hunting wolf, and Regina considers taking it on now, but Emma is oddly still her and her breathing is starting to sound like the beginning whistle of a tea kettle. so she clamps her free hand over Emma’s mouth and ignores the panicked eyes to turn around and stare again.

She was wrong: its skin isn’t smooth; its scales shimmer and reflects the light from the streetlamps. It’s eyes are chips of blue set in a trapezoidal face; improbable but very much real. It raises again to sniff, a slow sound that raises the hair on her arms along with it, and Emma whimpers into the hand over her mouth.

“Shhh,” she breathes. “ I don’t think it can see us.” The monster’s eyes are intent, but unknowing as it stares into the dark of the alley. It really can’t see them, she realises, and the overflowing dumpster that Emma chose to have her breakdown by was covering up their scent.

They wait five more breathless heartbeats that Regina can feel in the tips of her fingers before it moves away and lopes off. She can feel her fingers trembling at Emma’s wrist and mouth, and it takes a few seconds for her to realise that part of her fear is Emma’s magic clawing at the edges of hers.

“Stop that,” she says irritably. “It hurts.” Emma’s magic has never been a threat to her, not even at their angriest; it normally just hovers quietly at the edges of her consciousness, colours changing and shimmering like the flash of a fish through water.

Emma doesn’t say anything, only looks away, and Regina grits her teeth and fights through the ache of Emma’s magic, digging until she finds its source.

“What the hell is this?” she demands, grasping Emma’s wrist and lifting it up into the light. Emma tries to wrench her hand away, but she only tightens her grip until Emma gives up.

Her wrist is covered with the same scales that cover that creature, and it gleams sullenly in the light as Regina moves her arm, examining it. She forces Emma’s sleeve up past her elbow and the whole of her left arm is covered with small, tightly clustered scales that rasp softly when her arm moves. Emma doesn’t respond to her manhandling, except to clench her jaw when Regina rubs a finger over her scaled skin. Regina covers her arm up and takes a step back, giving them both some badly needed space. She tips her head back to breathe, and when she looks back at Emma the woman is staring back at her.

“It bit me,” Emma says. “In the caves, on my shoulder. It hurt like a bitch. I thought it had been healed along with everything else, but. Turns out that’s another thing True Love crap can’t fix.” Her anger, dulled and made foolish with alcohol now pours off her with palpable heat.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I told Blue. Mr. Gold. They don’t know what it is.”

“You do know it can use this to track you? It stinks of magic.” Emma gives her a foul look, but doesn’t answer.

“You could’ve told me,” she says.

“No, I couldn’t,” Emma says. “Can we just go home now?”

They get into the car and Regina starts to drive toward the apartment, keeping a sharp eye out for the creature. It had been hunting, not just wreaking havoc, and she would bet her apple tree that they, or at least Emma are exactly what it was hunting for.

Emma sits silent in the front seat, scratching at the border on her wrist where the scales begin. It makes an uncomfortable, hushing sound, and Regina resists the urge to tell her to stop.

“It’s going to keep spreading,” she says. “Your arms were fine when we saw you in the hospital, and that was only a week ago. Something like that can’t be good.”

“You think?” Emma says, as they pull up, then sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not. I’m acting like this was some great betrayal, you know? And it’s not. You don’t owe me anything. I think… I think I’m angry because I want it to be, you know? Then at least I have a reason for feeling this way.”

Emma isn’t supposed to speak to her this way. Emma is supposed to snark and argue and maybe, sometimes share a knowing look with her when Snow is particularly obtuse or Henry is particularly sweet. She knows Emma, has known Emma since the minute she stomped up her steps with their son, but Emma isn’t supposed to want that. She’s not supposed to want Regina to see her.

“Henry will stay with me until we figure this out,” she says. “ He’ll be safer.”

Emma doesn’t say anything, and when Regina turns to look at her Emma is just looking, face soft and for the first time in a long time the air between them doesn’t weigh so heavily on her, and she feels like she can breathe.

She doesn’t know what it is that Emma sees in her eyes that makes her lean forward just slightly, but she holds still as Emma moves closer slowly. Emma moves close enough that Regina can see the fine hairs curling at her temple, and waits. Regina takes a breath and changes her mind a million times in the second it takes her to lean forward and kiss her.

Emma’s lips are soft and warm and her hand holds onto the front of Regina’s shirt as they kiss, and Regina doesn’t know where to hold so she settles on her neck, squeezing gently with her fingers as Emma nudges her mouth open. Heat builds in her chest, and she can’t breathe, and she pulls away just as Emma’s hand tightens on the collar of her shirt.

“I don’t…” she starts, and Emma pulls back.

“Right. Sorry. I’m gonna go,” Emma says and she is out of the car and almost to her building before Regina can get her breath back.

*

**  
**

When Regina gets home she locks herself in her study and recasts the protection spell with a desperation that dizzies her. It doesn’t seem enough, but her magic has never been quite enough to give her what she wants.

*

She is pouring her first cup of coffee, still in her pyjamas, when it hits her. She’d spent a good chunk of the night awake, trying to remember where she’d seen that kind of scaling before, and it floats into her mind, sharp and clear and-

intent is everything, dearie, he says, and his face transforms into a horrid reptilian thing; she is terrified but can’t show it, she-

Her hands are wreathed in flame; the cup she was holding crushed to dust. She quenches the flames with an effort and tries to batter the rage flowing through her into something productive. It takes a long minute before she’s ready to pick up the phone.

“I need you to meet me at my house,” she says, and disconnects as soon as Emma says yes.

*

They meet outside Rumpelstiltskin’s shop, Emma in gloves despite the relatively warm weather.

“It’s spread,” she says, and Emma nods. “Well, I have some good news. I believe Mr. Gold is to blame.” Emma casts a doubtful eye over his shop. It’s closed and quiet, a settled kind of disrepair hanging over it.

“Doesn’t look like he’s been up to much,” Emma says.

“Looks mean very little when it comes to this man,” she says, and raises a hand to blast the front door off its hinges.

The inside of the shop is a dead looking as it appeared from the outside, and she tamps down on the urge to sneeze at the dust that hangs in the air.

“Down this way,” she says, leading the way into the basement. She forces that door open with magic, too, and they descend the staircase into the blackness below. Emma sticks close to her back as she fumbles for the small button hidden under the railing. There is a quiet click, and a section of the door opens to reveal a ladder. She leads the way, cautiously.

“He doesn’t know I know about this place,” she says, creating a small fireball in the palm of her hand.

“Actually,” a quiet voice says. “I do.” Her tiny fireball illuminates hard eyes set in a flat, furious face less than a foot away, and a long, curved knife gripped in clawed hands. A cloaking spell, the part of her mind that isn’t frozen says. That’s the only way he could get this close without her knowing it.

“I do, because I know everything there is to know about this town, Regina. About this town and you, my clever, clever student.” He speaks in a monotone, no trace of the lilting giggle he usually favours. “You creep into my den with that girl hanging off your arm, you creep into my home and you think I wouldn’t know.”

Emma moves next to her and stands shoulder to shoulder.

“You lied to me. You know what this is.” She doesn’t need to mention her arm, or the glittering Regina sees at her neck now; he doesn’t even bother to glance at it.

“Why would you expect anything else? What are you to me that I would tell you the truth?”

He hasn’t moved, the hands holding the knife haven’t so much as twitched, but he looks at them with the considering look of a butcher with a freshly sharpened blade, and yawning fear rises. She doesn’t have to turn around to know that the trapdoor will be closed, and there’s no use trying to teleport out of this room.

“Tell us how to help her,” she says, “and we’ll be on our way.” He turns to face Emma, face contorting in awful anger.

“I owe her nothing,” she growls. “You took my son away from me. You let him go. My son. Mine.” He lunges forward and Emma stumbles back, pulling Regina out of the way as he swipes with the knife. Regina feels her elbow hit against something hard and a sound of glass shattering echoes distantly. Her fireball flickers out and she relights it quickly. He has stopped in his tracks, motionless once more.

“You took my son from me,” he says. “You had him. You could have saved him. But you are weak. You let him go and now he is lost to me, again.”

None of what he is saying makes any sense. Baelfire was shot and fell into a portal when…

“When you saved me, from Tamara and Owen,” she says. “That’s when he disappeared.” Emma nods slightly.

“I had him,” she says, voice low. “I couldn’t hold on. He was hurt and I couldn’t…”

“Couldn’t. Such a subjective word. Couldn’t and wouldn’t and shouldn’t. What do any of those words mean when you didn’t? Three hundred years of effort gone in an instant because of you.”

He is not quite sane, if he ever was, and the blade of that long knife is reflecting the light from her fireball in a way that makes her wish that they had never set foot in this basement but the answer is here, she is sure of it, and she won’t leave until they have it. Her eyes have slowly adjusted to the gloom, and she can see pestles and dirty jars of ingredients that signify heavy potion making. She runs through the ingredients in her head, trying to fit them to a spell.

“You weren’t there,” Emma says. “How could you know all that?”

“Your little pirate friend,” he says. “There is very little a man won’t tell you when he’s lost a few appendages.” He does giggle then; the high pitched cackle that used to drive her mad. “You know,” he says, “I think he quite liked you.”

She spots the oleander and cats’ teeth in the corner of the table and it comes to her in a rush of understanding. Emma feels the jerk in her arm and moves to stand in front of her, but Regina nudges her out of the way.

“You fool,” she says. “You pathetic fool.”

“What the fuck is going on,” Emma says.

“You’ve been trying to bring your son back. You fool. You could have torn this town apart.”

“Regina,” Emma says.

“That thing is a byproduct of the magic he’s been doing here. Waste product. It’s called a Biyan. Deadly, and indestructible, and one of many if he keeps on.”

“Oh, well done,” he says, and the knife in his hands is moving so fast that she barely moves back in time to avoid it cutting her throat. He lunges again and her sleeve takes the worst of it but she feels the bite of the knife into her flesh before she stumbles away. He presses forward, and she erects a weak shield that flares with light as it is struck.

“Destroy the spell,” she cries out, and Emma dashes to the table along the side of the wall and begins to destroy phials and beakers indiscriminately. Rumpel follows after her, but Regina burns a thin stripe of red across his back and he turns back to her, knife twitching in his hands like it has murderous intent of its own.

She is no match for him; at her strongest, surrounded by blood magic and with an army at her back she was no match. She is weaker now, and out of practice, and terror is slowing her thinking, but he is weaker too, mad and crazed and distracted, and she continues to avoid his attacks by a hairsbreadth.

Every time he tries to go toward Emma she pulls him back, magic grasping at his arms and legs and tugging him toward her, and every time he turns to face her again, hate curling at his lips, the room seems to shrink in size.

And finally, finally, Emma knocks over the right vial and magic mushrooms outwards and strikes her in the chest. She gasps as Rumpel shrieks, a formless, piercing sound that sucks all the air out of the tiny room.

"My son," he moans. "Please. My son." She gets to her feet and stumbles over to the table, leaving him a crumpled lump on the floor.

"We'll have to destroy the spell book," she says to Emma. Her fireball firms and grows and she walks toward the corner of the room, where a gigantic book rests. The magic contained within pulses and snarls as she comes closer. Emma steps back and turns so she can see Rumpel, who hasn’t moved from his crouch on the floor, and Regina destroys the book with a blast of carefully directed energy. It shudders once, then lays still, and she knows that the pages will be blank.

“Spell books,” she says to Emma. “More dangerous than people give them credit for.”

Rumpel snarls behind them and she tries a barrier spell against him. It doesn’t hold longer than a few seconds even with him in his maddened state and he begins to stand.

“Wait,” Emma says. “True Love magic, right?” She raises her hands and screws her face up like someone’s shining a torch in her eyes and baby blue magic pours out of the palm of her hands. It melds with Regina’s about halfway to Rumpel

(and Regina takes a moment to notice how terribly Emma’s magic colour clashes with her own)

and their magic forms a web over his head, crossing and twining together and arcing over him to form a dome that seals to the floor around him. When the lines of webbing are so thick that she can barely see his face through them she lowers her hands and Emma does the same after a moment.

“Fuck,” Emma says and even from a foot away, in the dim light, Regina can see her eyelids fluttering.

She only gives a slight nod in agreement but she feels wonderfully awake and alert, the feeling of ice across her neck on a hot day, and she pushes the last of her lingering magic out with a twist of her wrist. It emerges in a puff of purple smoke, and Emma watches it with a lingering glance that freezes Regina for a moment.

“The irony kills,” Rumpel says. “Not as well as my knife would have… but.” He shrugs, or Regina thinks he does. “The Saviour giving you your happy ending. It’s beautiful.” His voice slips back into its habitual oiliness, so strong she can feel it sliding over her skin. “I’ve learned my lesson dearie, I promise. Now let me out.”

“You brought a nightmare creature into this realm,” she points out. “It nearly killed Emma.”

“For my child,” he says. “To get him back.”

“Your child doesn’t want you,” she says. “He spent the last three hundred years running from you.”

“Children will break your heart,” Rumpel says. “You know that. It doesn’t mean that we let go.”

“Regina,” Emma says quietly. “Let’s just go.” Regina glances at her and stifles a gasp in her throat, because the scales have spread up and over her face and hands. She looks otherworldly and deadly and terrified, and Regina shakes her head and walks toward the exit, past Rumpel in his cage.

“Let me out,” he purrs. Then, when neither of them say anything, he begins to kick and slash at the cage with his knife. “Let me out,” he snarls. A Dark One with no hope is a terrifying thing, and Regina is intensely grateful for whatever internal knowledge that is assuring her that he will not be able to break through their cage, not as long as they are both alive.

“Regina. Let’s go.” Emma touches a hand to the middle of her back and pushes gently, and she lets herself be led out of the dank room to the world above.

*

**  
**

“So, what now?”

Emma looks even worse in the light. At least fifty percent of her skin has been replaced by scale that glitters even in the weak morning sun, and she glitters even in the light shining through the car window. An adverse reaction to the magic exploding in Rumpel’s underground room, she thinks.

“We should be able to kill it now that the spell’s destroyed. And you should be fine.” In theory, anyway. She doesn’t see how letting Emma know that little bit of information will help.

“Sure. Kill the gigantic hellbeast that turned me into cold cuts the first time we met.” But Emma’s tone is lighter now, surer. She always does better with a solid plan.

Regina pulls out her phone. “I’ll just call Snow and she can round up the Dwarves. We can all spread out and look for clues. It’ll be faster that way.”

“No, don’t.”

“Why not?” Emma sighs and runs a hand through her hair.

“I haven’t exactly. My parents don’t know,” she half mumbles. Regina stares incredulously.

“How on earth could they not know? You… actually, don’t answer that.”

“It’s weird. And gross. And I just don’t want them to see me, okay?” Emma’s parental issues are practically leaking from her pores, and they do not have time for this. Regina sighs.

“Emma. Heading into danger without telling anyone where you’re going is the exact kind of idiot behaviour that gets heroes in trouble all the time.” Emma shakes her head.

“We can do it. I know we can. Please, Regina, I am asking nicely.”

And she says yes.

*

Emma spends ten minutes staring out of the window while Regina flips through her books and mutters to herself, and she is nearly startled out of her skin at Emma’s shout.

“It’s at the caves,” she says, eyes glowing with excitement. “You said it likes damp, dark places. It’s where we saw it first. Should have seen it sooner..” Regina opens her mouth and wait for the customary objection to come out, but there isn’t one. Emma stares at her expectantly as she closes her mouth and leads the way out and Regina can feel the smirk without turning around.

She hangs back long enough to leave a message with Ruby, telling her where they are going and where to find them if she doesn’t call in an hour before following Emma out of the room.

She may be a hero now, but she’s not an idiot.

*

The entrance to the caves looks more eerie than she remembers. Light filters away the further in they walk until the light that remains is weak and pale, giving up entirely at dissipating the shadows that curl in the corners.

They pass the place where Emma had nearly died and Regina pulls away before they can dwell. Emma drags her feet but the firm grip that Regina has on her hand serves to get her away.

“You’re fine,” she says. Emma grins, and the scales creeping up her face shimmer in the half-light.

“Mostly,” she says. Her fingers grip Regina’s tighter. Regina doesn’t let go, and they walk further into the caves.

*

They are standing at a literal fork in the road, and Emma is shifting uncomfortably, staring down the passage to her lift. The air from that direction comes in soft waves of fetid air that seems to hover in the back of her throat.

After a long, uncomfortable minute - Emma’s grip has been progressively tightening on her hand- Emma nods to herself. “Okay,” she says. and they move down the left hand passage.

*

The end is quieter than she expected it to be. The creature is huddled in a corner, limbs folded like a cat, bones protruding from it’s now-shrunken frame. It scrabbles to its feet when it senses them and is still tall enough to tower, but it looks more like a ruin than a nightmare. It sways from side to side, and Emma sways too, in perfect sync.

“Emma,” she murmurs, but Emma only lets go of her hand to take a step forward. She pulls on her arm and Emma whirls around, eyes bright blue. Sh doesn’t say anything, only stares, but for the first time the feel of the scales underneath her hand repulses her, and she lets her go. Emma turns back around and they continue to sway in tandem, the beginning steps of a dance. The creature reaches out a taloned hand and moves it to Emma’s chest.

“No,’” she says quiet. Fireballs didn’t have any effect the first time, and she heaves the earth under its feet to force it to lose its balance. It falls over backward with a muted shriek and she pulls Emma back toward her. Emma stares sightlessly, no longer hostile but eyes still that awful blue.

Heart hammering in her chest, she tugs Emma closer until they are only a few inches away, and closes her eyes. “Come back,” she says, and kisses her, quick and desperate against an unresponsive mouth. Emma shudders in her arms and pulls back, and-

-and Emma’s eyes are blazing, green and furious in her face, and Regina’s breath catches in her chest at the sight of her, magic winding its way to her arms and legs and blazing at her fingertips.

“You need to kill it,” Regina says. “Now.”

“Yeah, “ Emma says, clearly dazed, and Regina allows herself one moment of smugness as Emma pulls Charming’s sword from its place at her hip.

Emma stalks forward, back straight and sword held high, and there is no sound at all as she skewers it where the heart should be. One final, hopeless scream, and it collapses into dust that is swept up and away by an unnatural wind.

Scales fall off Emma’s skin and fall to the ground with the gentle rush of falling sand, and she steps forward and brushes them off wherever she can.

“I hate this town” Emma says scratching at her skin feverishly. “I hate it. Ugh.” Regina gives her one last appraising look.

“I think you’re fine,” she says.

“Mostly,” Emma says, and smiles, and everything is dim and quiet and Emma is right there, hands creeping toward Regina’s hips and smile hopeful, and it is the easiest thing in the world to lean forward and kiss her.

**  
**

*

And that should really be the end, but Storybrooke is Storybrooke and there is always a crisis, and before she knows it, it has been a week since she has spoken to Emma.

“Lovelorn looks good on you,” Ruby tells her one afternoon after bringing her lunch. “Brings out your cheekbones nicely.” She gives her that insolent look that Regina has always hated, and sits down in the chair opposite her (smaller) desk in her (much smaller) office.

(Really, she’s not bitter at all).

“Everything looks good on me,” she retorts, and Ruby laughs, but gives her one of those uncomfortable, knowing glances that remind her that Ruby, or Red, is more than people give her credit for.

*

**  
**

“I hate this town. I hate it,” Emma says.

“You don’t,” Regina says.

“We have a Dark One in a holding cell that no one knows what to do with, troll uprising and a sinkhole on the road out of town. What’s there to like?” But her voice is mild, and she looks relaxed, leaning against the railing of the pier and squinting into the sun.

“Thank you for meeting me,” she says, speaking slowly, picking her words carefully.

“Not a problem,” Emma says, and Regina will never get used to Emma being this gentle with her.

“Emotional awareness… is not my strong suit,” she says.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Emma says lightly, but Regina can feel the tension threading through her voice.

“I may have made a mistake, before, with you. Not choosing you,” she says. Emma doesn’t move, but Regina can maybe feel her lean just the slightest bit towards her.

“A mistake, huh,” Emma says, a mocking edge to her words.

“I don’t do well with surprises,” she says, aware that she sounds waspish, but Emma Swan has a way of getting under her skin that no one else has managed to.

“Sorry. Next time I’ll plan my agonising death so it doesn’t interfere with my declarations of love,” Emma says, and Regina swats her arm.

“Don’t joke about that,” she says. Emma turns to her, face serious.

“I won’t,” she says. “ And I’ll try to avoid surprising you too much from now on. But,” Emma says. “I’m not so good with feelings either. I kind of need to know where I stand.”

“I can do that,” she says, and just like that they are close enough to touch, her hands skimming across Emma’s back. Emma holds her tight, and Regina presses a kiss to her neck and buries her nose in her hair. Their magic hums in the air around them as the sunlight sparkles along the shore and her heart is so, so light.

 **  
**  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [prompt](http://mariathepenguin.tumblr.com/post/114604408440/otpprompts-imagine-your-otp-in-some-kind-of) that led to this fic.


End file.
